Bridie joins London's fashionistas

London Fashion Week - wow!

http://www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/

My company had some spare tickets for a corporate event at London Fashion Week this week and lucky 'ol me got an invite. Held at the National History Museum, my first reaction was..."a bunch of skeletons surrounded by a bunch of skeletons!". Unfortunately the event was held in a marquee on the grounds of the Museum - but I wasn't wrong about the other bunch of skeletons.

Yow! To see those young, emaciated, underfed stick insects trying to sell high fashion - it's enough to put me off diets!

When you see these shows in magazines and on TV, the models don't tend to wear bras (unless it's a lingerie show) and there is often 'bits' sticking out - the models usually seem pretty poised and cool about it. However, there was one model at the show I saw that wasn't so 'cool' about exposing her breasts - she kept readjusting her outfit all the way up and down the catwalk - and I wasn't the only one noticing!

The catwalk show we saw was actually really cool - I'm not a huge fan of some of the concept fashion that gets paraded in these types of shows (I've only ever seen photos before), but the designer's work we saw was really great. Lots of natural fabrics and muted tones. We saw Bora Aksu's show - he's Turkish born, but studied fashion in London - and you could see his cultural influences in his work. Here's a link to his site:

http://www.boraaksu.com/

The show we saw was for Spring/Summer 2006 and the last I checked that wasn't on his site, but you can see his other collections.

The whole 'corporate' thing was pretty grand - Moet champagne, lunch by one of London's premiere restaurants (Le Caprice) and a goody bag filled with product (guzzini espresso maker, coffee, hair and body care, magazines - woo hoo).

This weekend is 'London Fashion Weekend' - where a lot of the designers and top retailers sell their samples to the public at drastically reduced prices. The goody bag provided free tickets - so I'm off tomorrow with a friend and Steve's desperately trying to hide my credit card!

Ashes to ashes......

Well, they did it - England regained the Ashes after 18 years!

....and isn't it making life for us Aussies in the UK hell.

To be absolutely fair, England played the better game and deserved to win, sorry, I mean draw, oh yeah, they did win. Maybe the selectors back home will start to include some fresh new talent in the test squads now that our tired old team is starting to lose its edge.

Bridie's work was kind of enough to provide a live video feed to all computers so that staff could watch the final test, it also meant that everyone in her vicinity felt the need to continually comment on the game whenever they saw her.

We like to look on the bright side though - we both get to keep our jobs - ;)

Honestly, we don't know what's worse actually - England wins; England loses - either way we get grief.

Hopefully now our colleagues will concentrate on the football (aka soccer) and leave us alone - well ..... until the World Cup, that is.

Can't get the song out of our heads

Despite all the madness of the last couple of weeks, it seems you can't keep us down after all. No sooner had we started on those indentations in the couch, and we were already off and heading for the last evening performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

http://www.chittythemusical.co.uk

Now in all fairness, this show has been running for a while and we weren't all that particularly interested in seeing it in the past; and then they announced the final shows and we decided we had to at least see the flying car that everyone talks about.

So we trundled off to see Jason Donovan (in the lead), Alvin Stardust (as the Child Catcher) and of course, the star of the show - the car.

And it was good. Good enough that we bought the soundtrack (with the original cast including Richard O'Brien as the Child Catcher) - the downside is that Bridie keeps bursting out in the 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' song.

Bridie also went off to see Val Kilmer lead in a new production of 'The Postman always rings twice' which also finished last weekend.

Lenin moved

In the outer reaches of Budapest is a small park dedicated to the unwanted Soviet statues: The Statue Park

http://www.szoborpark.hu/en/en_index.php

And this sounded really cool. The fall of Communism is old news, but the statues stand proud.

Prepare to be underwhelmed.

We followed the brochures to a dilapidated train station on the outer reaches of woop-woop. We were now outside tourist territory, Toto. And the bus that is supposed to run every 15 minutes would be in ... 90 minutes time.

So we grabbed a taxi. And in our best Hungarian (lots of pointing and waving of brochure) we organised our way there. 3000 Forints later we had driven through most of the back streets of Buda. We really expected him to just pull over and kick us out.

Amazingly we made it, and pulled up out the front of a grand entrance that expects thousands of visitors. But it only gets a handful. The picture of Lenin, above, is from the entrance.

Inside we did a quick loop of the whole park in less than 20 minutes - including taking photos. An extra 10 minutes at the shop and we were wondering how to get the hell out of there.

Could we catch another bus back? Sure - but we would need to change buses twice. What the?

Into a waiting taxi, and the waving and negotiations began again. Except 3000 Forints this time got us chauffeur driven back into the city and dropped out the front of the Citadella. Clearly this guy hadn't done his dodginess homework.

http://www.citadella.hu/

Budapest - the last hurdle

The madness is over.

Our three weeks of back-to-back holidays have come to a triumphant "ahhhh." We plan to spend the next six weeks on the couch; maybe even leaving proper Bridie and Steve-sized indentations in the fabric.

Budapest was lovely. And we could gush about the castle and the bridges and so-forth. But we won't. Instead we'll post some random stories about our trip on this blog - keep an eye out!

Dreamscape

Bridie took me to Dreamscape in Southwark today, right near Tower Bridge.

It is a giant inflatable art installation. Like a bouncy castle, but you're inside it. And they play ambient music while the bright colours barrage your vision.

I was just laughing for the first 5 minutes. After that I calmed down a bit, and just wandered around with a manic grin.

Edinburgh Castle

So I'm testing the ability to send photos to the blog.

To see all the photos, check out our photo site

The second gap

Phew.

Back from Edinburgh, and the Fringe Festival.

We flew up to Edinburgh late Friday and caught up with our friend Linda that night. She's producing a show called Shaken N' Stirred. A funky Jazz cabaret show, with random guests from other parts of the festival. So every night is different.

Other shows we saw:
Darkside: A one man show by Tim Minchin, who apparently won some awards back in Melbourne. Intelligent humour, songs and cheap gags. Fantastic
Shut up Comedy from Japan: Two crazy Japanese guys who start with high speed visual gags, and move onto a recreation of Rocky. Great, but somehow the two sections didn't quite mix.
Best of Edinburgh: A grab bag of stuff.

Did we get to see everything? No. But there are thousands of shows on, so we didn't really expect it.

Next stop, Budapest

The first gap

Back from Paris. Next stop, Edinburgh.

Paris was great.

From a skating point of view it is just heaven. The roads are so smooth, the people are so accepting, and they have the largest street skate in the world. I could skate around Paris for hours and still find it relaxing.

Bridie, on the other hand, also found Paris heaven. Except she was out shopping for handbags and walking along the Seine river.

But we also got to spend quality time together; out for dinner, sitting on the beach, walking along the river.

Paris rollerblading

We're off to Paris tomorrow for a spot of rollerblading. I'm packing my blades and Bridie is packing her credit card. Apparently the sales are on in Paris and Bridie needs a new handbag.

I, on the other hand, will be on the Pari Roller.
http://www.pari-roller.com/

They have about 15,000 people every friday night, skating the streets of Paris. There are even police skating along with the pack. With guns. How could you possibly shoot someone whilst on skates? They also have ambulances at the back for the inevitable casualties.

We watched the first two episodes of that 'Lost' program last night. Not sure if we are hooked yet, more intrigued. I guess we'll see next week. Though there is a temptation to just go on the internet and see how it turns out.

Ah, the Internet. Is there anything it can't do?